I open the bond completely.
The drain is immediate and brutal. My life force floods through the connection, pulled into the vacuum of his dissolution. My vision goes gray at the edges. My heart stutters, forgetting its rhythm.
But the shadows solidify.
They rise around me, forming into something almost human. Arms first, wrapping around me with desperate strength. Then a torso, pressing against mine. A face, features sharp and beautiful and terrible, eyes still closed but there.
"You came back." His voice is wind through empty halls, barely sound at all.
"Of course I did, you idiot." I'm shaking from the drain, but I hold him tighter, marks burning as they maintain his form. "Now stop dissolving and help me save everyone."
His eyes open, not the burning gold I remember but dim amber, like embers about to die. He tries to speak again, fails, just holds on.
We stay like that, me kneeling in the ruins of his chamber, him clinging to existence through my marked skin and stubborn will. The realm continues collapsing around us, but for this moment, we're solid.
"Master..."
Mikaere's voice is gravel grinding to dust. I look up, see him trying to rise on three arms. My chest tightens, not sympathy, but practical concern. We need every fighter we can get.
"Stay down," I order. "You'll make the bleeding worse."
"The bleeding... doesn't matter... if the realm collapses."
He's right. I can feel it through the floor, the fundamental structure failing, reality coming apart at its seams.
"Can you maintain him?" I ask Mikaere, nodding at Nezavek.
"Not... like you can. The marks... they're anchor points."
Of course they are. His claiming of me became my ability to claim him back, to hold him in existence through sheer will and silver-marked skin.
"Then we do this together."
Still holding Nezavek with one arm, I reach for Mikaere with the other. The crystalline spear has to come out. I grip it, feel its wrongness, ice that burns, solidity that shifts, existence that shouldn't be.
"This will hurt."
"Pain is... educational."
I pull. The spear comes free with a sound like reality tearing. More golden liquid pours out, but also something else, light, pure and simple. Mikaere's essence leaking through the wound.
I press my free hand to the hole, will it closed the way I willed Nezavek solid. I don't know if it works the same way, but Mikaere gasps, and the leaking slows.
"Päivi," I call to the scattered pages. "Can you hear me?"
The pages rustle, try to form words. Some burst into flame. Others freeze solid. But slowly, painfully, they begin gathering into something like a shape.
"I'm... here... mostly..."
Nezavek stirs against me, his form solidifying marginally. "The Collector... did something... to the realm's anchor..."
"Later," I tell him. "First we fix everyone. Then we plan. Then we hunt."
"Practical," he murmurs against my throat. "I should have... expected that."
The next hour is triage and reconstruction. I gather Päivi's scattered pages, sorting them by touch. Some sear my fingers with heat, others leave frost burns, still others whisper forbidden knowledge in tongues that predate civilization. She reforms slowly, her consciousness full of holes where pages crumbled beyond recovery.
Mikaere's arm is gone, not severed but erased. The Collector's ice didn't just cut, it deleted that part of him from existence. But three arms are better than none, and once I bind his shoulder wound with strips from my ruined shirt, he can stand.
